Another week, another anniversary.
Ubiquitous though it may be, and though it might, like Mahler’s symphonies in
this if in little else, benefit from fewer, better performances, The Rite of Spring surely deserves
mention in its centenary. One can argue about whether it, or Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, premiered the previous
year, had the greater ‘influence’; that will largely come down to what one
decides to mean by that notoriously slippery term. But since that legendary
premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Rite has passed not simply through the vessel of its creator, as
Stravinsky famously put it, but into our collective consciousness. That has not
always been a good thing; too many of today’s performances treat it as a mere
orchestral showpiece, reduce it to the level of slightly spicier
Rimsky-Korsakov. Boulez’s analysis, available in his Relevés d’apprenti (‘Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship’), should
be required reading for anyone tempted to proceed down that path. Certainly
anyone having heard Boulez conduct the work is unlikely ever to forget the
experience. (I am fortunate to have done so twice.) So, a hundred years on,
performing the Rite brings its own
challenges, not least, how does one make it shock anew?

Clever programming helps –
but all too often that can fall down unless performances match it not only in
quality but in conception. Fortunately, Esa-Pekka Salonen hit or rather engendered
the jackpot in both respects. Prélude à l’après-midi
d’un faune is as good a candidate as any for the first piece of
twentieth-century music. Its composer would famously give a two-piano
performance of The Rite, with its composer, and minus its final ‘Sacrifical
Dance’, in 1912. More importantly here, Salonen imparted a marriage of warmth
and coolness that presaged a similar dialectical confrontation in the second
half. The performance, conducted but not micromanaged, was wondrously flexible,
especially when it came to Samuel Coles’s delicious flute arabesques. The
Philharmonia strings were on far better form than they had been for last
week’s Wagner anniversary concert: rich, even glamorous in their sheen,
though not too much, and only when truly given their head. And the climax may
well have been the most erotic I have heard, positively Tristan-like (think of the opening of the second act) in its
pulsations. Except, of course, Wagner’s metaphysics are gone, replaced not with
Strauss’s Nietzschean materialism but with Debussy’s far more radical indeterminacy.
Boulez, a master conductor of The Rite, not
to mention one of the greatest composers of the later twentieth century, stood not so very far away. Likewise Mallarmé – and his union with Boulez
in Pli selon pli.

Varèse was present at that
first Rite performance in Paris,
prior to his emigration. Amériques was
his first large-scale work following his arrival, though here it was given in
the reduced, 1927 scoring. (The orchestra is still huge!) Its opening alto flute solo necessarily brought back
memories of Debussy’s Prélude, though
the specific instrument, here splendidly played by Rowland Sutherland, with
equally necessity brought to mind Boulez, also a master conductor of Varèse,
and Le Marteau sans maître. A New
World cityscape it may be, at least at some level, but Amériques under Salonen also gave us presentiments of the primæval
stirrings of The Rite. He was equally
deft at imparting dramatic form and inevitability to a work which, in lesser
hands, can all too easily sound sprawling. Lest that sound dry, I can assure
you that this was also a riot to put to shame those dubious events at the
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées., a riot that took upon itself many forms of
wildness. And what a tremendous conclusion! Salonen visibly willed the
orchestra to a still higher decibel count, its noise finally managing to drown
out the coughing couple – it is, apparently, still more fun with a partner – seated
behind me

Such was the power of that
performance of Amériques that I
worried Salonen’s Rite might pale
somewhat. Quite the contrary: this proved a performance to match one I thought
I should never hear approached, from Boulez and the LSO. The challenges were
new, of course; that first bassoonist never had to vie with an accursed mobile
telephone, but I doubt that he could possibly have matched Amy Harman in
richness of tone or precision, initiating duly weird – in the very best sense –
responses from her orchestral colleagues. Salonen’s sense of flow here at the
opening was similar to that in Prélude à
l’après-midi; consciously or otherwise, links were being forged. Ghosts of Petrushka began to dance on acid. Yet something
older and newer was getting under way
– and it truly felt, in mind and body alike, as though it were a celebration, a
rite. All those pointless showpiece performances were forgotten; this was the
real thing. Presentiments of later Stravinsky, for instance the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, were
offered – but in a sense they were not, for whereas that later masterwork is
frozen, almost objet-like, here it
was part of a gigantic, world-changing thaw. There were a few slips here and there, but they mattered little or nothing, unless one were missing the point to Beckmesser-like proportions.

This, then, was a performance
that combined, indeed brought into fruitful conflict, various opposing forces –
just like the work itself, and its plot. It was viscerally exciting and musically satisfying; it was as
sardonic as Stravinsky’s own performances, yet benefited from far greater
orchestral weight and, dare I say, theatrical imagination. In that sense, it
did what seem people claim to hear in Gergiev’s performances, though I have
found them mostly an incoherent mess. And those dancing reminiscences of Petrushka kept coming. Tension was
maintained until the sudden close of the first part. Then we found ourselves in
territory similar and yet quite changed. It soon became clear what had changed;
the fate, quite inescapable, of the chosen one had been ordained. Now we could
only sit it out, fearful and yet complicit, indeed relishing it; for it felt
that we were involved, dramatically, almost as if in a Wagner drama. (We have
not even really begun to relate the tale of Stravinsky’s debts to his supposed
antithesis.) Alluring sweetness, not in the least cloying, characterised rich
violas. Controlled delirium marked the evocation of the ancestors. I could list
many such wonderful features of the Philharmonia’s outstanding performance.
However, the crucial thing was not just that they added up to more than the sum
of their parts, but that Stravinsky’s miraculous score was communicated and
experienced as a searing drama. Just as drums hammered blood-lust and carnage
into our immediate consciousness – a word to which my thoughts keep returning –
so was the final nail hammered into Stravinsky’s absurd claim that music could
not express anything other than itself. The
Rite was experienced as vividly as the Symphonie
fantastique, yet penetrated far deeper into our collective consciousness,
the consciousness of our so-called ‘civilisation’, shown to be anything but. It
emerged as a work of 2013, not 1913.

The LSO’s free Berlioz
concert in Trafalgar Square coincided awkwardly with the first half of this
concert at St Martin in the Fields; one’s heart went out to the performers. In
the circumstances, a desire to rush through The
Arrival of the Queen of Sheba was not entirely unforgivable; once one’s
ears adjusted to the very quick tempo, there was cultivated playing to be heard
from the members of London Octave, twelve-strong, despite the name. Intonation
was more of a problem during parts of Mozart’s neglected C major Piano
Concerto, KV 415. (It doubtless suffers from comparisons with two brothers in
the same key.) Fortunately, Nick van Bloss offered compensation with the piano
part. True majesty was imparted to the first movement, despite the lack of
trumpets and drums (and woodwind). A more yielding approach announced itself
during each movement’s cadenza. The slow movement in particular offered ample
evidence of the pianist’s skill in spinning a line; as long as it lasted, it
was sung, with not a hint of the choppiness that bedevils so much contemporary
Mozart performance. A fine balance, moreover, was struck between the ‘hunting’
high spirits – never, of course, unalloyed in Mozart – and the minor mode
Adagio material in the finale. Whilst it would hardly be plausible to claim
that the other orchestral instruments were not missed, they were missed less
than one might have expected.

Van Bloss was on better form
still in Bach’s G minor Piano Concerto; the orchestra too seemed more at ease,
with few tuning problems this time around. This was, especially so far as the
piano was concerned, a muscular performance, eager to communicate Bach’s
harmonic rhythm, and very successful in doing so. One hears the music very
differently from the original violin version (up a semitone), not least because
of the piano’s left-hand part, which here helped greatly in generating and
sustaining impetus in performance. The slow movement benefited from judicious
application of left-hand octaves, Busoni’s example followed in the best spirit.
Onward tread was not impaired but rather incited by the gravitas engendered.
The joy of the dance was fully experienced in the finale, though without any of
that hard-driven quality so fashionable in so-called ‘authentic’ performances.

Mozart’s great C minor Adagio
and Fugue offered an apt pendant, speaking as it does of Mozart’s absorption in
the contrapuntal example of Bach and Handel – and in the chromaticism of the
former. It is certainly one of those works in which Mozart stands mid-way
between Bach and Schoenberg, and that is for the most part how it felt here,
though there were again certain aggravations in terms of tuning, especially
during the fugue. Eine kleine Nachtmusik
certainly seemed to appeal to elements of a somewhat restless audience, and
much of the playing could be enjoyed, though it takes a more inspired rendition
– most likely with a conductor – to elevate this all-too-familiar music to the
stature it deserves. Still, with the exception of a fast minuet – surely too
fast for ‘Allegretto’ – tempi were judiciously chosen, and the music progressed
without fussy interruption.

London’s two principal opera
companies have offered a baffling near-silence as their response to Wagner’s
two-hundredth anniversary. With ENO, once home to Reginald Goodall, one may
delete the ‘near’; the Royal Opera has opted for a single production, in
November, of Parsifal, whose casting
does not exactly lift the spirits. There is certainly nothing anywhere near the
composer’s birthday itself. The BBC Proms have valiantly stepped into the gap,
offering concert performances of the Ring
(Barenboim), Tristan und Isolde
(Bychkov), Parsifal (Elder) and Tannhäuser (Runnicles). Those concerts,
however, will not take place until July and August. For 22 May, London’s
offering was a Philharmonia concert conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. Doubtless
there was stiff competition for Wagner conductors on the day, and Chirstian
Thielemann was otherwise occupied in Bayreuth, but it was difficult not to feel
that someone with greater Wagerian credentials might at least have been a
possibility. Bernard Haitink, for instance? Most of us would readily have
swapped the aforementioned Parsifal to
hear the Royal Opera’s erstwhile music director once again in Wagner.

Was I being unfair? The proof
of the aural pudding would, as always, be in the hearing. Sadly, the Prelude to
the first act of Die Meistersinger – not its ‘Overture’, as the programme
insert had it – received an account, which, if undoubtedly preferable to the
straightforward incomprehension Antonio
Pappano had shown conducting the entire opera at Covent Garden, proved no
more than Kapellmeister-ish. Timings
as such tell one nothing, but it felt rushed, often more martial than
celebratory. There was certainly no sense of midsummer blaze or indeed embers. The
Philharmonia strings, though many in number, sometimes tended towards wiriness.
Detail was either skated or fussed over. Though there was more fire towards the
close, it was really too late by then. It doubtless had not helped that, earlier
in the day, I had listened to Furtwängler conducting the same music in 1931,
but even taking that into account, it was an undistinguished performance.

Rather to my surprise, the Tristan excerpts worked better. I remain
sceptical, to put it mildly, about the wisdom of pairing the first act Prelude
and the so-called ‘Liebestod’ (Liszt’s
wretched description of Isolde’s Transfiguration). Though I am well aware of
the distinguished precedents – even Furtwängler and Boulez have followed the
practice – to my ears it jars. That said, both conductor and orchestra were on
better form. Not only was their a fuller string sound but Davis now seemed to
understand, certainly to communicate, that something was at stake. He struck a
good balance between forward impulse and a more analytical approach to the
score. Though certainly not plumbing any Furtwänglerian metaphysical depths, it
was a satisfying enough musical experience. Susan Bullock, joining for the ‘Liebestod’,
held her line well enough. At some times, she shaded sensitively; at others,
she proved rather squally. The Philharmonia, however, offered beautifully
shimmering and pulsating support. Whoever interposed immediately with a boorish
‘Bravo!’ should be condemned to listen to Verdi for the rest of Wagner’s
anniversary year.

The second half was devoted
to the third act of Die Walküre. It
is not the Wagner act I should have chosen in such circumstances; surely the
first act of the same drama works better on its own. But we had what we had,
and presumably part of the idea was to offer the popular, if generally
misunderstood, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Davis for the most part proved a
competent guide, though there were some arbitrary-sounding slowings, though he
offered few if any revelations. Whilst the Philharmonia played well enough, it
sounded during the ‘Magic Fire Music’ as if someone had suddenly turned on a
light-switch, such was the vividness of colour hitherto lacking. (That is not
simply a matter of Wagner’s wondrous scoring at the end.) There is not much to
say about David Edwards’s ‘semi-staging’, save that very good use was made of a
very limited space, the direction being largely a matter of having singers come
on, go off, and engage with each other. That they all did well, with the
exception of James Rutherford’s Wotan. An excellent touch at the end was to
have Brünnhilde go up behind the stage, to the organ, to be put to sleep.
Handing her a very old-fashioned helmet at that point seemed odd: neither an
obvious post-modern touch nor in keeping with the neutral dress otherwise on offer.
Bullock had her moments, less audibly strained than she had been recently at
Covent Garden. She made a good deal of Wagner’s text, though there were moments
of relative vocal weakness. One cannot really judge a Sieglinde on the basis of
the third act, but Giselle Allen offered an account more hochdramtisch than lyrical; ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’ sounded rushed,
but that may have been Davis’s account. At any rate, what should be ecstatic was
more matter-of-fact. The Valkyries were a good bunch, a couple of them somewhat
weak, but others excellent indeed; Jennifer Johnston’s Waltraute particularly stood
out. Rutherford’s Wotan, however, was a disappointment. Apparently glued to the
score, and none too certain with it, there was no sign whatsoever of him having
internalised the role; his performance was more akin to a first rehearsal for a
minor oratorio. Tone production was often rather woolly too.

Had one been coming anew to
Wagner, doubtless much would have impressed, and there may well have been some
in the audience who were. (There were, as one might have expected, some
decidedly peculiar people in the audience. A man seated next to me insisted on
filming the first half and hour or so of the Walküre act, my glares having no effect, the ushers either not
noticing or not caring. When finally he put his camera away, he replaced it
with a skull-capped walking-stick.) London’s anniversary contribution remained,
however, surprisingly low-key. The rest of the
Wagner 200 celebrations promise much more, as do the Proms.

Wednesday, 22 May 2013

During the night decorated the stairs and the vestibule, but I note by my mood that I am no longer up to festive occasions, and now, even before the day begins, here I sit, writing this and weeping. God grant my children joy today; whoever has suffered much loses the capacity to laugh. On festive days in particular one realises how sad life is! The unremarked pssing of days without unspoken fears is surely the best thing for sore hearts. God bless all whom I love, and give me rest soon! - The pleasure R. felt soon swept my melancholy mood away. At 8 o'clock I positioned the children with wreaths of roses: Loldi and Eva at the front door; farther down in the bower, beneath a laurel, Boni; at the bottom of the steps, beside the bust loaded down with flowers, myself and Fidi; at the end of the tableau Loulou. The music (Huldigungsmarsch) began at 8:30, the 45 soldiers grouped under the fir tree, at the conclusion R. emerged sobbing from the house and thanked the conductor; he was deeply moved, making me almost regret having arranged this little ceremony. Afterward the children recited poems to him, we breakfasted in gay spirits and then went off to rest. In the afternoon the birds were to be released and some fireworks lit, but a huge storm came up and we ended the day quietly. Many letters and telegrams (King, Richter, Standhartner, etc.), a fine poem from Hans Herrig (The Three Norns), a nice letter from Prof. Nietzsche. A telegram from my father ('Forever wth you, on bright as on gloomy days') pleased and moved me greatly.

Birthday! I wish R. many happy returns very simply this time, for he is preparing the great treat himself. Daniela recites to him a little poem written by Clemens, the children present him with a Bible; Fidi very pretty in the blouse embroidered by Countess Bassenheim. Everything in good order, but rain and rain, not a single ray of subshine in the offing! - R. relates that in a dream he saw Fidi with his face full of wounds. What can this mean? - We drive to the meeting place, Feustel's house, rain, rain, but despite it all in good spirits. Arrival of the King's telegram, which is to be enclosed in the capsule with other things. R. then goes to the festival site, where, in spite of the rain, countless people - including women - had gathered, and lays the foundation stone. The speeches, however, are made in the oepra house. In Feustel's house I give Herr Julius Lang (who in a letter from Vienna had told me that he had sent Prince Bismarck a telegram about the concert in Vienna) a piece of my mind concerning his compromising activities with regard to our affaris during the past 10 years. I did it in fear and trembling, but I did it, so as from now on to be rid of such an individual. - Dinner at the Fantaisie with Standhartner, who, like everybody else, praised the behaviour of the children, particularly of Fidi, during the ceremony. At 5 o'clock the performance, beginning with the Kaisermarsch. The 9th Symphony was quite magnificent, everyone feeling himself freed from the burden of mortal existence; at the conclusion sublime words from R. on what this celebration means to him! - Then to the banquet. Before the concert a Frau von Meyendorff, just arrived from Weimar, handed over a letter from my father - the letter very nice, but the woman, unfortunately, very unpleasant. Her manner is cold and disapproving. - At the banquet R. proposes the first toast to the King, then to Bayreuth; we leave at about half past nine. Niemann and Betz had left earlier out of wouned vanity. I sit with Frau von Schl., and attempt to converse with Frau von Meyendorff; because of her obstinacy the conversation takes place in French. R. enters during it and is vexed with the ugly tone introduced; an angry mood on his part, sorrow on mine. In the end he returns to the banquet, I stay behind with Marie Schl., Marie Dönhoff, and Count Hohenthal, Home at 12 o'clock. (Count Krockow gives R. a leopard which he shot in Africa.)

Many, myself included, have expended large numbers of words; I have no doubt that we shall continue to do so. However, the ultimate riddle remains encapulated not just in that chord, but in this work. Nietzsche rightly said he would only touch it with gloves. Wagner himself worried in writing to Mathilde Wesendonck that only poor performaces would save him, and us: 'Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, – I cannot imagine it
otherwise.’ This may only be the Prelude to the first act, but it remains a rare instance of a 'perfectly good' perfomance, with all that entails:

Tuesday, 21 May 2013

For the (dubious) benefit of
overseas readers, who may until now have been living in blissful ignorance of
Lord Tebbit of Chingford, his reappearance on the British political stage might
prove, short of Margaret Thatcher’s resurrection, the ultimate in ‘80s retro.
Notorious for stances that threatened to make the Prime Minister herself
resemble a woolly-minded liberal – his advice to the unemployed was that they
should follow his father’s lead, getting on their bikes to find some work, and
he suggested a ‘cricket test’ for immigrants, to assess their loyalty on the
basis of which team they supported – he seems more recently to have become
obsessed with homosexuality, to the extent that a friend of mine suggested he
should consider seeking asylum in Iran or Saudi Arabia. (The idea of him as the
Abu Qatada of Teheran is not entirely without its amusing side.) He certainly
has longstanding form, having
written to The Daily Telegraph in 1998,
perturbed that gay men might do each quasi-Freemasonic ‘favours’, were they to
be permitted to attain political office. His latest intervention, an interview
with The Big Issue reported today
(click here)
has as its context a failed bid by the extreme Right of the Conservative Party
to derail legislation to enable gay marriage; Tebbit now finds himself
exercised by the possibility of a lesbian queen who might have an artificially
inseminated heir. Other interesting light is cast upon his subconscious by his
concern that gay marriage might lead to his marrying his son in order to avoid
inheritance tax. (If I were Tebbit Jr, I should probably now be in the departures
lounge, nervously consulting my wristwatch.) On the eve of Wagner’s 200th
birthday, I wondered initially whether this story might draw a few threads
together. Might we out Tebbit as a Wagnerian? Had he simply been listening to
too much of Die Walküre (see the clip
below for Siegmund and Sieglinde, brother and sister, declaring their love for
each other, the curtain falling just in time to spare too many Chingford
blushes.)

But alas, not. I reminded myself that in the world
of Tebbit, the issue is about inheritance. He does not seem so much as to
consider the possibility that some of those gay couples might wish to marry out
of love. One might claim Wagnerian influence in that respect too; Wagner was at
best ambivalent concerning marriage, arguing rightly, in Proudhonian fashion,
that it was little more than an instantiation of bourgeois property relations,
and having his Jesus of Nazareth stand as a liberator of mankind – and
womankind – from all such constraints to human flourishing. Inheritance – ‘the
world’s inheritance’ of the Ring and
the Ring’s ring – is equally deadly.
Yet in Die Walküre, Wagner
straightforwardly offers us a portrayal of two human beings who fall in love,
unconcerned with society’s judgement upon them, unconcerned even by the
discovery that they are brother and sister. Their love, of the moment, refusing
to be set in stone either by the runes of Wotan’s spear of law or Fricka’s dead
hand of custom, defies bourgeois marriage, yet not after the fashion of Norman
Tebbit’s Thatcherite reduction of all to financial and contractual concerns;
quite the opposite. Now it may well be, as Wagner's intellectual development
tends to suggest, that the hopes placed by many in love are illusory, that we
should do better to attend to Schopenhauer than to Feuerbach, and that marriage
may certainly not prove to be the best way forward for anyone of any sexual orientation; Brünnhilde belief that she is married,
cruelly symbolised by the ring itself, does her and Siegfried no good at all.
But Wagner points to renunciation; he certainly does not suggest that we
retreat to a world of loveless marriages, such as those of Sieglinde to
Hunding, or others conducted purely for reasons of inheritance. Wagner’s relevance? (Wagners Aktualität, as an essay by Adorno has it.) It has never
been stronger.

As everyone must know by now, Wagner will be 200 tomorrow. I posted a few thoughts a couple of days ago concerning his continuing, inescapable impotance from a standpoint of composition and stage direction. Most of my 2013 Wagner experiences have yet to come, but so far I have no doubt as to that which has made the greatest impression on me: Oper Leipzig's tremendous advocacy for Die Feen. I urge anyone for whom it might be the slightest possibility to consider a visit. It is by any standards a wonderful opera, both in its own right and on account of the uncanny presentiments it offers not only for every single one of Wagner's subsequent stage works, but also for works such as Gurrelieder and Die Frau ohne Schatten. Moreover, it benefits both from an intelligent production and fine musical performances. (The only case in which the Chelsea Opera Group's concert performance a little over a month earlier was preferable was Elisabeth Meister's stunning Lora, though it also had a good cast overall.) If any operatic staging this year, other than Stefan Herheim's forthcoming Salzburg Meistersinger - and I think I can say this before having seen a minute of it - demands wider circulation on DVD, it must be this. In the meantime, the late Wolfgang Sawallisch's recording, from the 1983 Munich season in which he, at the Bavarian State Opera, conducted all of Wagner's dramas, remains the only truly recommenable recorded performance; I provide a link below. Here, howver, is a taste of the twenty-year-old composer's first completed opera, its Overture performed by the same orchestra in 1952, conducted by Franz Konwitschny (yes, father of Peter), who imparts just the right balance between roots in Weber, Marschner, and others (Beethoven and Mozart being more evident elsewhere in the score), and a forward-looking dramatic imperative which belongs unmistakeably to Leipzig's greatest son:

Sunday, 19 May 2013

Anniversaries are strange
creatures; more often than not, they now seem to make us moan. (Did anyone not
become sick and tired of the dual Mahler anniversary years 2010-11? Most
notably, anyone who actually had a real interest in Mahler?) Until relatively
recently, my unconsidered response to this year’s Wagner bicentenary was –
well, not much of a response at all. Indifference, not total, but relative,
reigned. Yes, it has had me thinking about certain things, often more about
1813 than 2013, and it certainly has had me working on certain things, from a
visit to the splendid Wagner
World Wide conference in South Carolina onwards. Yet to a certain extent every year is a Wagner
year, and not just for me. London does not do especially well for Wagner
performances, though at the same time they are far from non-existent. (The
responses or lack thereof, by the two main opera companies here have, however,
been baffling: a single production, yet to come, from the Royal Opera, and
nothing whatsoever from ENO.) More to the point, however, not only the arts but
so many of the ways in which we might and perhaps should consider our lives
remain very much in Wagner’s shadow.

Yes, there have been
anti-Wagnerians – Stravinsky is perhaps the most obvious example, though one
should always take his alleged æsthetics with a large grain of salt – but their
often militant anti-Wagnerism pays at least as much testimony to Wagner’s
influence as more evident discipleship. The seriousness of Wagner’s vision for
music, for the theatre, for art, for humanity remains as inspiring as ever –
and as artistically productive. Stockhausen’s Licht, still to be staged as a cycle, is only the most gargantuan
of modernist engagements, which of course began long before Wagner’s death,
Liszt as so often standing as a pioneer (as well, of course, as a powerful
influence upon Wagner). When opera,
following the Second World War, seemed to have reached something of an impasse,
much of the avant-garde for no particular reason having decided it was no
longer ‘viable’, it was Wagner’s example that pointed the way forward. Boulez,
initially suspicious of Wagner’s mythologising, camethrough his work with Wieland Wagner to be
one of the composer’s foremost modern advocates and freely admitted that his
own compositions from the 1970s onwards would have been quite different were it
not for his immersion in conducting Wagner’s dramas. (A great sadness is that
he never conducted Die Meistersinger,
one of the three operas he most wished to conduct but never had the opportunity
to do so, the others being Don Giovanni
and Boris Godunov. And Tristan never really had the attention
it deserved from him, being confined to a collaboration with Wieland in Japan.)

Nono, a composer who from a
relatively early year did write for the stage – and all of his works are in one
sense or another highly dramatic – was asked, in a 1961 interview, ‘Who
were the musicians that most influenced you during your earliest years?’ He
named but one, Wagner. Operas such as Intolleranza
1960 and Al gran sole carico d’amore
may certainly, in their political concerns and in their determination to
explore the boundaries of theatre and of musical drama, the composer’s
relationship with the audience included, may and should be considered very much,
though certainly not exclusively, in a Wagnerian tradition. Just as with Wagner,
Nono always believed in the necessity of a ‘provocation’ for an artwork, ‘The
genesis of any of my works,’ he wrote, ‘is always to be found in a human
“provocation”: an event, an experience, a test in our lives, which provokes my
instinct and my consciousness, as man and musician, to bear witness.’ Moreover,
that witness was best served in a fashion both verging upon the traditional,
its roots in the Schiller-Marx-Wagner idea of art as the paradigm of labour,
but also technological, an interest in new technical possibilities very much
both of its post-war age and also with warrant in Marx. As Adorno observed, no
composer of the nineteenth century had been so preoccupied with new technology
as Wagner; there can be little doubt that, had he been born a century later, a
state of affairs which would in itself have made the musical world of the
twentieth century very different, he would enthusiastically have explored the
world of electronics, without ever abandoning more immediate human expression.
Just like Nono, in other words.

Henze, another determined musical dramatist from that generation, was
determined to escape from Wagner. Whereas Nono dedicated Intolleranza to Schoenberg, Henze’s Prinz von Homburg, more or less contemporary, was dedicated to,
Stravinsky, and another anti-Wagner was summoned up in explication by the
composer. 'Every bar,’ he claimed,
‘reveals Verdi’s influence as a music dramatist.’ Nonsense, of course, for the desire
to escape to the Mediterranean south was German through and through – think of
Goethe, or indeed Wagner himself – and the Nietzschean dialectic – actually
Wagnerian in origin – between Apollo and Dionysus would inform not just this,
but many of Henze’s works, none more so than The Bassarids, for which Auden primed Henze by insisting that he attend
a Vienna performance of Götterdämmerung.
This is all thoroughly Germanic, not Italian at all, ‘sentimental’ rather than ‘naïve’
in Schiller’s sense, but post-Wagner, that is the lot of all art, it would
seem. (By that, I do not mean to imply the transformation may be solely
attributed to Wagner, but he is both highly emblematic and extremely
influential in that respect; for instance, no one could be less ‘naïve’ an
artist than Stravinsky.) Take Henze’s autobiographical recollection of that
visit to the Vienna State Opera, when Karajan gave him use of his box: ‘I was
perfectly capable of judging the wider significance of Wagner’s music: as any
fool can tell you, it is a summation of all Romantic experience … But I simply
cannot abide this silly and self-regarding emotionalism, behind which it is
impossible not to detect a neo-German mentality and ideology. There is the
sense of an imperialist threat, of something militantly nationalistic, something
disagreeably heterosexual and Aryan in all these rampant horn calls, this
pseudo-Germanic Stabreim, these incessant chords of a seventh and all
the insecure heroes and villains that people Wagner’s librettos.’ Those are not
the words of someone who has put Wagner behind him, and whether explicitly, as
in his own Tristan, or more
implicitly, the ghost of Wagner, the ghost of the Romantic and modernist past – and future? – would continue to haunt Henze.

Moreover, in the world of
operatic staging, Wagner has perhaps loomed larger than any other composer in
terms of the sometimes furious debates that have raged. That is doubtless
partly to be attributed to Wagner’s own work as something akin to a modern
director. In an interesting and, in the best sense, provocative essay, Keith
Warner has recently pointed out that Wagner ‘almost single-handedly invented,
certainly in opera,’ the role of director, ‘almost certainly provoked into
action by the work of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen [George II] and his celebrated
acting troupe’s artistic director, Ludwig Chronegk,’ whose production of
Kleist’s Der Hermannsschlacht he had
seen in 1875, the year before the first Bayreuth Ring, ‘which Wagner chose to direct rather than conduct’. It is no
coincidence that one of the most interesting – and musical – directors at work
today, Stefan Herheim, has made his name above all through his Wagner stagings.
Herheim’s
Parsifal is now the stuff of
legend; his Lohengrin,
which, sadly, received far less exposure, stood very much in that line,
engaging critically with work and reception, and offering possibilities of
redemption for both, as well as for us.

In that, Herheim and others
are doing very much what Wagner himself did – smashing the complacency of the
present and of naïve, highly ideological constructions of a past that never
was. They do this not for the sake of it, but so that a world in which Wagner,
Beethoven, Shakespeare et al. may
continue, despite every incursion of the modern ‘culture industry’, to
flourish, to provoke, to nourish. For, as Carl Dahlhaus once observed, ‘It is
precisely in order to radicalise conflicts – so that “resolutions” are ruled
out – that dramas are written; if not, they would be treatises.’ It is for
precisely the same reason that we perform rather than re-enact, that we study
as well as perform, that we think rather than wallow, that history enlivens
rather than deadens. History, musical or otherwise, is something we write as
well as make, something we think, we imagine, we perform, as well as learn; it
lives on the stage as much as in the archives. Let us remember that as we
commemorate the one musical dramatist who does not pale when standing alongside
Mozart; then we shall have an anniversary not just worth celebrating, but an
anniversary that will celebrate itself.

Katharina Thoma’s
Glyndebourne debut had been heavily publicised. Sad to say, not only does her
production of Ariadne auf Naxos fail
to live up to any expectations that might have been engendered; it fails
dismally to live up to Strauss and Hofmannsthal, indeed even so much as to
engage with them. Audience members would apparently erupt into uproarious
laughter when someone, anyone, so much as walked onstage seemed delighted, but there
was more sign of the artwork we know, love, and desperately wished to have
interrogated in the miserably paraphrased surtitles – is it that difficult to offer a reasonable
translation? – than on the Glyndebourne stage, at least during the Opera
proper.

The 1940s seem almost to be de rigueur for a certain breed of opera directors
at the moment; this staging follows in the dubious footsteps of David McVicar’s not entirely dissimilar Médéefor ENO. A pandering desire to ‘entertain’ – ironically here, given the
concerns of the Prologue, though the irony seems entirely accidental – replaces
genuine dramatic, or indeed almost any other variety of, engagement. And yet,
of course, Zerbinetta does not appeal to the lowest common denominator; that
she both amuses and touches is owed to an expected level of Kultur on the part of the audience.
Insofar as what she offers is ‘low’ culture, and that is a considerable ‘insofar’,
that only has meaning in terms of contrast with its ‘high’, seria antipode – or cousin. Here, we
simply have her reduced to a ‘mad’ person, straitjacketed in a wartime
hospital, who, tedious ‘joke’ of tedious ‘jokes’, sings some of her high notes
whilst having an orgasm induced by a visitor. I am not sure what is more
offensive: the transformation of mental illness, presumably a product of
wartime, into fodder for laughter, the refusal so much as to listen to the text
(and no, the orgasm does not betoken serious study of the score), or the fact
that so many seemed to respond so positively to Carry on Ariadne. Naiad, Dryad, and Echo are nurses, whose every
shaking of a sheet elicited helpless guffaws from that vocal section of the
audience.

A still greater indignity
suffered by the work comes at the end when Ariadne, reuinited with her fighter
pilot Theseus, has him land himself on top of her behind a curtain. It was
difficult to decide whether such prudishness were preferable to a more full-frontal
vision; either path would simply have been embarrassing in context – or rather,
weirdly out of context. Hoffmansthal’s concern with transformative myth receives
not so much as a nod, but then nor does the transformative power of Strauss’s
music. Goodness knows what the Composer has been doing, wandering around the
Opera, not unreasonably lost; to start with I thought he was a doctor, then a
patient, but he really seemed to be there to give the false impression that
what we see is somehow connected with the Prologue.

For that is the greatest problem
of all with this staging, bafflingly so, since one would have thought that,
whatever Konzept or none, it would have
been pretty straightforward to get right. Much of the Prologue is presented
reasonably enough: no particular insight is gained, but it does not jar
especially with what we are seeing and hearing. (Many audience members appeared
to be doing neither, instead reading the shoddy titles and responding
accordingly, that is when they were not simply chattering to each other. Stony
glances had no effect whatsoever upon them.) The setting is said to evoke the
Glyndebourne of the period, that is of the arbitrarily selected early 1940s,
though I am not sure one would have known that without being told. But things
happen pretty much as they should; rather in the sense of an ultra-conservative
staging, one gleans little but has ‘the story told’. (Christof Loy, as his wilful,
equally un-engaging Salzburg
Frau ohne Schatten shows, is not
necessarily the most sympathetic director of Strauss, yet he engages with the
Royal Opera House in a considerably more revealing version of the site-specific
approach in his staging of Ariadne.) Then
suddenly, at the close of the Oper, the melodrama of an air attack bursts upon
the scene. Some people, apparently, ‘just loved’ the ensuing fire: an effect
quite without cause, slightly to misquote Wagner on Meyerbeer. For the rest of
us, it seemed more akin to a desperate attempt to ‘do’ something with or to the
work, given that for some, unspecified reason, the richness of Strauss and
Hofmannsthal was not nearly enough for Katharina Thoma.

But far worse is to come, for
any idea of the Opera as a staging suggested in the Prologue appears to have
been thrown out of the window. There really is no connection between the two sections
of the work. Instead one has the house transformed into a wartime hospital, in
which for some reason Ariadne awaits the return of her aforementioned fighter
pilot. The very essence of the work, not just its delicious satirising of
responses to ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, but its metatheatrical probing of opera as a
performative art, has simply been passed over. Thoma comments in a programme
interview, ‘But sometimes when I leave the theatre and see the news, and there
are catastrophes, think, what have I been worrying about? There are more
important matters in the world.’ Unfortunately, the æstheticism of the work and
its creators is not so much undercut as rejected in favour of uninvolving
incoherence.

Musical performances were
better, though I suspect – and hope – they will improve as the run proceeds.
Vladimir Jurowski had the excellent LPO on a tight leash: often too tight,
harrying the score rather than giving it time to speak. Strauss of all
composers does not need to be sentimentalised, but, despite certain kinship or
rather pre-emption, this is not Stravinskian neo-Classicism. A half-way house,
akin to Busoni, would be perfectly justifiable, intriguing even; however, for
much of the time one desperately wanted to ask the conductor just to calm down
a little, perhaps more than a little. The Opera fared somewhat better than the
Prologue in that respect, though its musical course did not come across, as it
should, as if in a single, long breath. Strauss may be an ambivalent Wagnerian
here, but a Wagnerian he remains, especially in that requirement for
understanding and communication of the melos.

Although the voice is not
what it was, Thomas Allen still imparted to the Music Master a theatrical
authority so evidently lacking in the stage direction; Wolfgang
Ablinger-Speerhacke provided an effective foil as Dancing Master, though he was
perhaps inclined to overact. Of the principal characters, Laura Claycomb’s
Zerbinetta was by some distance the most successful. Notwithstanding an
unfortunate passage of extremely stray intonation during her big aria, she
otherwise managed her coloratura very well, and acted the part in as lively and
sympathetic fashion as the staging would permit. Soile Isokoski’s Ariadne
improved as the Opera progressed, her music before ‘Es gibt ein Reich’ having
suffered from severe inability to sustain, let alone, to float a Straussian
phrase. Yet, though matters improved in that respect, hers was not an involving
portrayal. (Much of the fault may of course have been the director’s, but not
all of it.) Sergey Skorokhodov experienced technical difficulties as Bacchus –
one can readily forgive some of them, given Strauss’s cruel writing – but also
managed on occasion to display greater mettle; his is certainly a performance I
can imagine becoming more impressive on subsequent evenings. Kate Lindsey,
though she threw herself commendably into the role of the Composer on stage,
disappointed vocally; the voice lacked any of the richness, even vocal
variegation, one longs for in the role, however unfair it may be to hark back
to Irmgard Seefried. Smaller roles were generally well taken, offering a properly
‘Glyndebourne’ sense of theatrical company; Dmitri Vargin (Harlequin) is a
singer whose future we might be well advised to watch.

Yet, despite the wonderful
surroundings and some more than creditable music-making, the evening was sorely
let down by Thoma’s staging. It offers neither ‘fidelity’, whatever that
slippery concept might mean, nor the courage to try something new and to pursue
its conclusions; the incoherence is its ultimate problem. Where the work
presents a myriad of possibilities, the production closes them down, without
offering anything satisfying in their stead. And if that makes me of the
Composer’s party, so be it. Ultimately, we all know that, though Strauss plays
his games of masks at least as cleverly here as anywhere else, the moment when
they drop, when we hear his voice, is
the Composer’s ‘Musik ist eine heilige Kunst...’. All of us, it would seem,
except Thoma.

Not the most obvious of
pairings, perhaps: Dido and Aeneas
and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s The
Lighthouse. One can certainly find connections if one tries, as director
John Ramster valiantly did in his director’s note, especially with respect to the
role of Fate. And of course one can make connections between most things if so
inclined, when placed together. This, however, seemed more like an evening of
two halves.

The performance of The Lighthouse was spectacularly good,
at least a match for the recent English Touring Opera production, and arguably still more theatrically gripping. (How
fortunate we are to have had two stagings in close succession!) There was not a
great deal in the way of scenery; much was done with Jake Wiltshire’s brilliant
– at some points, literally so – lighting, by turns suggestive of the
lighthouse itself, the red eyes of the Beast, and much more. Ramster and his
colleagues engendered a terrifying sense of claustrophobia and whatever horror –
production, like opera, leaves matters tantalisingly unclear – it is that
actually takes place. The sheer hell of being cooped up together, the promise
of release having clearly been frustrated more than once, is conveyed
viscerally, more by the characters’ interaction than anything external, and
thus all the more powerful for it.

For that, of course, the
three singers should claim a great deal of credit. Andri Björn Róbertsson struck
Calvinistic terror into the heart as the hypocritical fundamentalist, Sandy.
From the moment of saying grace, his sonorous deep bass, combined with
charismatic stage presence, had one thinking of a perverted (anti-)Christ
figure. His physical excitement during Blazes’ song, offered attempted release
in more than one sense. Samuel Queen and Iain Milne presented a nicely ambiguous
Blazes and Sandy, quite as impressive as actors as singers. Lionel Friend’s
direction of the Royal Academy Sinfonia was quite beyond reproach; after a lacklustre
showing in the first half (about which, more below), the orchestra sounded
rejuvenated: precise, sardonic, and at times overpowering. The knife-edge
balance between fatalism and human agency on stage was replicated, indeed
engendered, in the pit. Quite outstanding!

What a difference a conductor
makes, for Iain Ledingham’s direction of the same orchestra in Dido and Aeneas had been disappointing.
Adopting that strange practice of having modern strings simply eschew vibrato,
as if that somehow were enough to qualify as an ‘authentic’ performance,
whatever that might be, Ledingham set the tone for what was to follow in the
Overture: listless, hard-driven, and with sonority redolent of a school
orchestra. (It was certainly not in any sense the players’ fault, as The Lighthouse demonstrated beyond
reasonable doubt.) If only Friend had conducted both. Vocal performances were
less impressive too, or rather they were in the title roles. After a shaky
start, Sarah Shorter recovered well, but was so let down by Ledingham’s
conducting that it was difficult to reach any proper judgement. Samuel
Pantcheff sounded out of sorts as Aeneas; maybe he was under the weather. Not
for the first time, though, Sónia Grané shone, this time as a mellifluous
Belinda. Rozanna Madylus made for a nicely malign Sorceress, ably supported by
weirdly snarling witches, Tereza Gevorgyan and Irina Loskova. Ross Scanlon
almost threatened to steal the show as a wickedly camp Sailor.

Ramster’s staging of Purcell’s
masterpiece presented a similar meeting between camp and stylisation, perhaps
strongest in the choreographed dances. Maybe that match was an expression of
his ideas concerning Fate; it would make a good deal of ‘Baroque’ sense on
paper. However, I could not help but agree with my companion’s observation
when, slightly ruing her inability to watch a Eurovision semi-final, she said
that it was actually all to be seen here. Certainly the strange portrayal of
the underwear-flashing witches did not seem so very distant from what one might
have imagined unfolding in Malmö at the same time. Despite some fine offstage
choral singing, I felt strangely unmoved by what should be one of the most
tragic of all operatic final scenes. (‘Tristan
und Isolde in a pint-pot’, was Raymond Leppard’s wonderful description of
the opera.) No matter: it would have been worth travelling a long way for a
performance such as we heard of The
Lighthouse.

Sunday, 12 May 2013

Evan Tucker is running a series on his wonderful blog. (Any of you who do not know it already should remedy that straight away). It occurred to me that some readers might be interested in my contribution, for which please click here; for Evan's own contribution, click here.

If
a production, and I include musical as well as staging elements here, has one
more strongly confirmed in one’s judgement that Wozzeck is not only the greatest opera of the twentieth century but
one of the greatest from any century, then it has accomplished its principal
goal admirably. The first night of ENO’s new production unquestionably achieved
that, reminding one yet again how paltry most operas, whenever they were
written, seem when placed anywhere near Berg’s shattering drama. Tears
certainly came to this reviewer’s eyes more than once during the third act,
only to be superseded by a numb sense of utter horror at the child’s future
prospects, or rather lack thereof, in the final scene as music and drama so
chillingly came to their celebrated halt: no conclusion, simply the most abject
desolation.

Carrie
Cracknell’s contemporary – to us – production may not encompass everything
suggested by Berg’s work, but most sensible people would agree that a single
interpretation need not; it is perfectly possible to concentrate upon certain
ideas, and to leave others for another time. There may be losses entailed in
that course of action – for me, the Doctor’s experiments sat somewhat oddly,
some might even say nonsensically, with the rest of the action – but there will
be gains too. We are in a barracks town, suffering from disorder both social
and, in Wozzeck’s own case, post-traumatic. The wretched vision – is it only
his? Or is it real? – of a coffin draped in the Union flag, its pallbearers,
and a soldier in action hammers home the point (some might say a little too
heavily, but I was won over). The squalor of Marie’s council flat tells its own
tale, as does the centrality, somehow greater than one generally senses, of the
tavern to this town’s horrible, hopeless life. Though not a barracks town, and
Aldershot or somewhere might have been a better example, something about the
portrayal suggested a certain, perhaps rather dated, view of a northern city
such as Hull.

The
odd thing about Wozzeck, set against such a backdrop, is that he seems less
ill, more philosopher. There is of course an element of that in the opera in
any case, but it is brought out more strongly here. Madness gives way to ‘Hamlet
in Hull’, who eventually resolves, with a greater degree of calculation than
one might expect, to kill Marie and then himself; we seem more to be in the
realm of EastEnders perhaps, as Marie’s
flat floods – there is no lake as such – and turns partly red. One also senses
more strongly than usual that this is one level the story of a crime,
explicable yes, but still a murder, one that led, of course, to a celebrated
trial. (The city museum in Leipzig to this day has a fascinating section of its
permanent exhibition on the original case as well as Büchner and Berg.) Violence
hits home too, whether that of Wozzeck’s crime, that of the Drum-Major’s vile
abuse of him, or that simply endemic to society both particular and general.

Designs
are properly ghastly, enhancing claustrophobia and the town’s desolate
tackiness. The former quality hits home all the more strongly given the
excellent decision to have all locations present on stage at once, sometimes
used and/or lit, sometimes not; there is no escape from what becomes very much
a community drama in the most negative sense. There is perhaps a sense that this was
conceived more as a piece of spoken theatre, or at least closer to that
tradition than might in principle be ideal, but on those terms, it works very
well, Richard Stokes’s exemplary translation contributing powerfully to the
drama, without drawing undue attention to itself.

I
was fascinated by Edward Gardner’s conducting of the score. Gardner’s method is
certainly not what I have become accustomed to, nor what I am ultimately likely
to favour, but the well-nigh neo-Classical bent imparted to Berg’s closed forms
brought revelations of its own. Rarely if ever can the inner workings, the ‘constructed’
quality, of Berg’s score have been lain so bare. The ENO Orchestra, a very few,
quite forgivable, slips aside, followed his direction admirably indeed. There
was certainly hyper-Romantic, expressionistic loss, especially earlier on, yet
the final Interlude retained most of its horrifying impact; at last, it seemed,
there was opportunity properly to cut loose. As an additional standpoint, quite
distinct from those offered by great interpreters such as Abbado, Boulez, Böhm,
and Barenboim,
this musical narrative of mechanisation briefly wrenched into human
subjectivity, if only in death, had me thinking in various ways not only about
the score but about the drama as a whole.

Leigh
Melrose made a wonderfully human hero, as starkly opposed to such mechanisation
as to the barbarity of his social conditions. The aforementioned ‘Hamlet’
quality of philosophising and indecision was at least as much his
accomplishment as the production’s, not quite so ‘intellectual’ as
Fischer-Dieskau’s controversial portrayal, but complex in a different and not
entirely unrelated fashon. Marie is a very difficult role to bring off
convincingly; ideally, one needs to be Waltraud Meier, but what to do if one is
not? Too much of the whore and not enough of the angel, or the other way
around? Sara Jakubiak managed the tricky balance very well, soaring moments of
radiance pitted against the grime of quotidian existence. Tom Randle was, as
usual, excellent beyond the call of duty as the Captain, he and James Morris as
the Doctor offering exemplary clarity of line and diction, as well as fully
inhabiting their flawed characters. (We should, of course, remember that their
flaws are in large part also to be attributed to the viciousness of society;
Wozzeck and Marie are not the only victims.) Bryan Register’s thuggish Drum
Major horrified in the best sense, whilst Adrian Dwyer and Clare Presland
offered finely-etched portrayals of the ‘other’, surviving couple, Andres
(perhaps his wheelchair proved a cliché too far?) and Margret. Presland’s
crazed, dramatically truthful moment in the tavern limelight proved a powerful
moment in its own right, presaging Wozzeck’s deeds yet also offering an
alternative. Peter van Hulle offered another example of truth in madness, the hallowed
tradition of the Fool cast in new light. Harry Polden – how one felt for him,
cowed under Marie’s kitchen table as she entertained the Drum Major in her
off-stage bedroom! – and the other children had us shiver, shudder, turn in righteous
anger against the wickedness of a society, our
society, which we know will perpetrate the same horrors upon them. Who cares?
Certainly not our political class; yet do we? Truly? Wir arme Leut’...

Friday, 10 May 2013

I wish I could begin to understand the hysterical cries from people who, though not having seen a staging of an opera or indeed of anything else, consider it so offensive that they demand - in this case, successfully - that it be withdrawn. Like them, I am in no position to offer any sort of criticism of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein's production of Tannhäuser; I have not seen it and now it looks as though I never shall. What little information has come my way from reports is insufficent to enable any of us meaningfully to engage with the staging, though what I have heard concerning the director's Konzept strikes me as far from intrinsically absurd. I spend a silly amount of my time and energy fighting lazy, ignorant connections being posted between Wagner and National Socialism, but to inform a staging of one of his dramas with themes drawn from later - for that matter, contemporary or earlier - German history - does not seem to me questionable or even controversial.

Of course the Third Reich and the Holocaust are, rightly, sensitive topics. Yet, bizarrely, there often seems to be far greater controversy when they are interrogated than when - sickly, to my mind - they are treated as material for mere 'entertainment'. There was often particularly shrill criticism of a fascinating staging I saw at the Edinburgh Festival from the Cologne Opera of Strauss's Capriccio; I found it especially thought-provoking, but doubtless it enraged those only wished to see 'pretty' frocks, rather than to ask about the compromises Strauss and German culture engaged with, let alone to interrograte themselves.Again, I do not know into which category - interrogative, entertainment, or perhaps some other - Burkhard C Korminski's production fell, thoigh so far as I can discern from reports, there appears at least to be an element of the former. It may well have turned out to be needlessly 'controversial', unmusical, or all manner of other bad things; only those who have seen and thought about it are in any position to know, and they of course may have their minds clouded too. Nevertheless much of the public laps up with quasi-pornographic relish endless documentaries, films, popular histories about the Third Reich and Hitler in particular as if there were no tomorrow. Moreover, arrogantly uninformed productions - 'I could have approached The Damnation of Faust by reading a great deal about Berlioz but I avoided that' -such as Terry Gilliam's Damnation of Faust treat the Third Reich as little more than fodder for theatrical spectacle and are lauded for it. I thought Gilliam's production truly dreadful, indeed offensive, but it never occurred to me to agitate for the English National Opera to shut it down; nor, so far as I am aware, did it occur to anyone else to do so. Likewise, the exit of Elisabeth into a gas chamber in Sebastian Baumgartner's Bayreuth Tannhäuserstruck me and many others as offensive, largely on account of its gratuity; it seemed quite unmotivated in what was in any case a highly arbitrary, indeed quite incoherent, production. People have every justification, every right, to discuss any staging, though it helps of course if one has actually seen it, but to seek to silence those with opposing standpoints?

So what was different on this occasion? That genuinely puzzles me. Part of the answer may lie, not in the circumstances of this production, but in an increasingly noisy, though, it would seem, for the most part numerically insignificant, faction amongst opera audiences and, still more, amongst people who - yes, I have to plead guilty here! - spend too much time talking about opera and music on the Internet. Their enemy is something they call either Regietheater or, still worse, 'Eurotrash'. (The latter seems to be originally an American term, though it is no longer confined to the other side of the Atlantic, and exhibits a curious, some might say imperialist. claim to 'ownership', or at least to 'protection', of an artistic phenomenon from another culture.) Lazy phrases such as 'the composer's intentions' - some peddlers seem even to be unaware that Wagner was highly unusual in writing his own poems, and that the librettist might actually deserve some consideration - or Werktreue are angrily chanted with all the self-reinforcing fervour of a self-selecting single-issue lobby, or even a quasi-religious sect. Drama goes for little, or nothing, in this world; instead, its heralds not only desire but demand a series of set and costume designs that monumentalise the worst taste of the 1950s. There were wonderful productions during the 1950s, so far as we can tell, just as there have been terrible productions, 'traditional' and 'radical', during the early twenty-first century. Yet the success of a production goes far beyond its designs; one can tell very little from a photograph or two, which is all most protestors have had to go on, and indeed one may be entirely misled by a decontextualised image.

I may be entirely wrong about this, and hope that I am, but it seems that the present debacle has more to do with an opportunistic attempt to berate a German theatre - German opera houses tend, for various reasons, to be more open to experiment than their British, let alone American, counterparts -through exploitation of the very historical phenomena about which the protestors claim to protest. It may not have been consciously designed as such, for fanatical fervour tends not to operate in that way; 'the cause', however incoherent, becomes internalised. One of the functions, indeed imperatives, of great art is to try to liberate us from such a Nietzschean 'herd mentality'. Yet uninformed insistence that 'unwholesome', 'degenerate', art must be eradicated, in order to 'protect' that which is 'good' and 'true': have we not heard such claims somewhere before?